


Bois des Landes.

by OneLittleWriter (Franglish_Humanoid)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, British English, Bruce does not get a cameo because writer can't write him at all, F/M, I have to be up in three hours what the fuck even?, Located in France because author writes what she knows, Might become a series if writer gets kicked up the behind enough, Teambuilding, Totally did not miss a typo in the tags like a gigantic twat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:45:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franglish_Humanoid/pseuds/OneLittleWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers finds himself face to face with something... unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bois des Landes.

**Author's Note:**

> When I run through the deep dark forest long after this begun  
> Where the sun would set, trees were dead and the rivers were none  
> And I hope for a trace to lead me back home from this place  
> But there was no sound, there was only me and my disgrace...
> 
>  
> 
> This is an incredibly early Halloween fic because I'm going away for Halloween which I semi-dedicate to my wonderful Tony until I stop procrastinating and put an end to the short oneshot-turned-21-and-still-counting-page-romance-novella I promised him last May.

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If there was one thing worse than being an Avenger in New York, it was being an Avenger on a publicity tour in another country.

 As the freezing and bitter Atlantic-tossed wind bit at Steve Rogers face, he quietly wondered to himself just how high the person who had put the team up to this latest excursion into, as Tony would put it, the arse-end of nowhere.  
Yes, on the face of it, the short trip to the relatively pleasant sounding South-West of France seemed like the perfect place to conduct an exercise in teambuilding with what even he had to admit was still a ragtag and volatile group of people that had been thrown together, hashed and mashed into a team and labeled the protectors of the planet. The biggest problem he was facing, as self appointed leader of "Earths mightiest heroes", was that it was nigh on impossible to keep the group on one page at all times.

 Tony Stark was a nightmare, anarchic and rebellious past the point of sane reasoning, yet he was far from being the one that gave Steve the most cause for concern. No, the joint holders of that title were the affectionately dubbed Assassin Twins, better known as Hawkeye and Black Widow.  
Clinton Barton was trouble prone in a way no mortal man should be. He refused to live even within proximity of the tower, lived off a diet of pizza, chinese takeout, piss poor beer and reruns of shows which were in no way even relevant to the common man, spent his days like a dead man waiting for his heart to stop and lived like one which believed only in his instincts to keep his heart beating. His apartment had been sworn a biohazard zone by at least four different cleaning companies in just the time that Steve had known him.  
And then there was Natasha. She was the polar opposite of Clint, orderly, precise, hated television and obeyed orders to the nth degree. The problem with her was that she lived nowhere, ate nothing and honestly did not seem to exist for great periods of time. It was only by nagging Maria Hill a great deal with all the sincerity that his name and titled allowed him to muster for Natasha's safety that he was able to extricate an apartment number for the petite Russian agent. Not that she actually seemed to live in the assigned quarters at all. They were as bare and clinically sterile as any hospital room he had been in during his fragmented lifetime, the gal seeming to have no inclination to let anyone get a fix on her.

 But back to the situation at hand. It was intensely cold, the moon shining like a blinded eye low in the sky as he stood and waited forlornly in the shadows of many mighty pines. He could only just see it, peering through the aforementioned trees as if it were watching him. _La voyeure eternel des délits des hommes._ He shivered, though not from the cold. Barton and he were meant to be going for a slow-paced evening training jog, yet the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was nowhere to be found and running more than a twelve minutes late by his mental clock. Perhaps in any other situation he would have given up by now but Steve had been asked to wait whilst his teammate took a very private phonecall. He was a man of his word and was so still waiting in place, nothing could or would move him from there until he got a reply from him.

  The wind whipped off the seething, writhing ocean and shot through the trees to slash at his exposed skin like the claws of a furious creature. It moaned lowly, like an animal in distress and then died down, the spikes of the pines stilling almost at once.  
Then it moaned again, the chill he braced himself for not joining it. He frowned, immediately wondering what sort of wind made such a noise yet failed to be felt.  
At this point his answer came... Shed leaves and twigs from some prior storm cracked a few feet from his side. He turned, two lamplike orbs reflecting in the moonlight as they stared at him. Those eyes approached, realising their owner had been spotted, accompanied by the continued cracking and crunching of the tiny dead plant matter underneath.  
Fox red fur was bathed in the strong, blinding moonlight, tinged only with points of black to the ends of it as it came more into focus. The eyes changed colour, morphing quickly from the mad yellow of a reflected light to a deep and distrusting green, as malicious as it was haunting to him.  
The eyes of an apex predator.  
His gaze was drawn by a glint, the very edges of sharp and pearly white teeth visible between black lipped gums, seeming to cut the light with their sharpness as they reflected back the light at him.  
The teeth of an apex predator.  
It took another great step forwards, fully showing itself to him. The coat was massive, a great ruff around its neck appearing, then supported by thick and tousled hair running along the ridge of its spine and all the way down to the tip of its sideways swept tail. Underneath that great weight of fluff there was the definite suggestion of slight muscularity, rendering an otherwise gargantuanly appearing animal sinewy and graceful even for the undeniable bulk it possessed.

 Now, Steve Rogers was far from a stupid man. He had seen a large portion of the world in a very short space of time and had more than a fair idea how it seemed to work on the surface at least. He was equally an artist and a historian, having lost so many years to the ice that any history, be it contemporary or ancient was of great interest to him. So he was very assured by the fact that he could spot one glaring problem with what he was faced with.  
There were no major predators left in this part of the world, save a handful of bears and two packs of Eurasian wolves in the mountains which split France from Spain some two hundred odd miles to the south. There was no way what he was faced with, a living being of flesh, fur and blood which could in no way ever be anything but, and it pained him to admit this, a wolf. It's bone structure, shape and apparent vocabulary (had he mentioned the soft growls it was emitting constantly like rolls of angry thunder rolling from between its jagged teeth?) were that of no other living species but a wildwolf. Canis Lupus.  
This said, he was not aware of wolves reaching its more than impressive size, or showing any inclination to approach people, especially on ones own.

 Long seconds passed, dragging their heels as he waited for the animal to make its play. Waited for it to run for or away from him. Waited for him to either become its prey or dust in its tracks. Nothing arrived or left. He kept his muscles loose, relaxed as if he was not wishing to coil, turn and attempt to escape from that predatory gaze. Finally, painfully, it seemed to come to a decision, as if it had been deliberating exactly the same things he had.  
Thickly furred and black pointed ears swivelled around and opened up, curiously listening to his frenzied heartbeat that it could doubtless hear perfectly and it dropped the corners of its lips to cover those dangerous teeth. It cocked him a curious look and took a step away before rolling back on its huge haunches and bounding forwards into the darkness of the night again.

 Steve slid back against a tree, emotionally exhausted by what had been less than a grand total of twenty seconds in the presence of a creature that had not at any point shown any interest in doing him any sort of physical damage. So why was he feeling like he'd taken a bout with the Winter Soldier?  
Clint quickly returned after that, offering neither explanation or apology for his absence and Steve did his best to push whatever had happened in those mere twenty seconds of surreal encounter out of the conscious part of his mind.  
They refused to stay there indefinitely however. It was not until three weeks later, curled in a blanket by a campfire in the autumn-kissed Rockies on a Stark-organised trip to get out of the city that they scrabbled back to the forefront of his mind. The wolf, for he had come simply to label the likely animal as that despite the handful of factors that excluded it technically from this definition, had given him a look. The regard he had received from it was not that of a savage and dumb animal, trudging through the entirety of its life searching simply for the simple things to ensure its survival but that of, dare he say it, a person.  
It was whilst watching his fellow team mates interact, it struck him like a ton of bricks at last. Clint turned his head to reply to something Natasha had stated from her spot sprawled across Tony. So it seemed that was where the seemingly invisible teammate spent so much of her missing time and even if they were unlikely to say the least, it seemed to work for them since Pepper had divorced herself from Tony’s affections to concentrate on keeping the company running for him. He was perfectly calm, if slightly amused as he rebuked her playfully, and then it happened. She tossed her head with a snort and shot him an emerald tinged eyeroll. Steve’s stomach dropped, realisation dawning in a terrible, nigh on painful way. She seemed to sense his eyes on her and swivelled her head to face him. At the apparent look on his face, he received nothing short of an insolent smirk and, unmistakeably, a hand went across her face and down , fingers coming together in a point to create a sign he was well aware of.

Wolf.

 

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**Author's Note:**

> French translations:  
> Bois des Landes: Woods of the Landes (Exceptionally beautiful pine forest that extends inland from the southwest Atlantic coast of France and the department it gave its name to. I believe it's part of the Aquitaine region.)  
> La voyeure eternel des délits des hommes: The eternal watcher of mans crimes. (Though voyeur typically has the same sense as it does in English now.) -This quote came from a work done on the subtlety of language to influence text which had no source on it, so it's not mine but god knows who it is by in reality.


End file.
